Duo AdviceFollow

Necro and Ranger sounds good to me. :)

also a viable option for killing stuff might be, to have the ranger keeping aggro (with flamelick no biggie) and the Necro simply sicks pet and dots the heck out of the mob... could be more efficient than the other way around (of course depending on lvl/gear/AA...)

for duoing per se: hotbuttons help a lot, like one for the Necro:
/Pause 5, /assist ranger
/pause 15, /cast dot1
/pause xx, /cast dot1
/pause 15, /cast dot2
/cast dot2

where xx is a value depending on the recast time.

and another one
/pause 5, /assist ranger
/pet attack

just a few bits, but I still hope it helps :)

P.S. haven't really duoed in a while, but I did it using two puters with two screens. I imagine it's easier than tabbing in and out...

I really appreciate the advice =)

I have a game pad with macroing capabilities, so I can put those hotkeys to very good use. (i.e. just hit one button for the whole sequence)

As for the second post, the Clr is a High Elf and I won't be keeping the same race for em, but as for the quested armor, what armor is that exactly? I've been in/out of EQ since 2001, but mostly out, so I'm not really up to date on a good bit of the stuff post-PoP. How do I get that armor and what's required to get em?

Thanks again for the input guys =)

I disagree with the above post. A Ranger and Necro is my main duo pair. For really tough mobs, I simply bring both of my toons to a group. Otherwise, we are owning Jewel of Atiiki, where the exp is pretty good, and the TBS hand augment quests are pretty much cake with this pair. I pull with my ranger using Earthen Shackles (will eventually re-snare using AA ensnare), and pile on the dots with necro, she then FDs. Once aggro is lost by her, she sits down and meds, then re-dots. VERY quick kills. I will admit, I dont stand toe to toe with mobs, but use root and shoot, or just kite. This is by far my favorite pairing. The hot keys mentioned above are a must. Instead of moving from one keyboard to the other on my two comps, I use an USB keypad, to control the other toon. Positioned right next to the one on my keyboard, I never have to even look at the other comp (unless I have to type in dialogue).

I also duo using a shammy/ranger pair as well. Hunting that way allows me to hunt mobs that summon, but the kills dont come as quickly. My ranger is level 75 and the necro is almost 74, whereas the shammy is only level 69, so that has alot to do with it. My cleric is level 70, but I prefer to use the shammy.

Another duo pairing I have used is a pally and druid.

Anyway I would stick with the ranger/necro pair. There are other, equally fun pairs, so you might also want to experiment.

taking damage from the mob is no biggie if you have slow. i agree, unless your wearing top end raid gear, its more trouble than its worth to tank anything past 55 or so.

but with slow, all things are possible.

necros solo fine if you stick to outdoor zones and aggro kite. but aggro kiting creates alot of donwtime as opposed to slowing a mob and beating the tar out of it while your healer is sitting on his butt medding.

and if your only concern is kiting in differant places, the necro is fine. but keep in mind, unless you find a undead camp, thats what you will be limited to. aggro kiting. fear doesnt stick on anything past level 50. and alot of level 60 mobs cannot be rooted to cook down.

with slow and a tank, you can hunt anywhere with less downtime.

not saying it cant be done, just saying it is not the most effective combo.

as for best soloer.....not any more. while you can fear kite, nothing beats them, but once the mobs cannot be feared, after level 50, they are not effeciant at all. they have just as much downtime as a mage then, only a mage can again, fight anywhere because of the aggro their pets hold, and their pets are stronger and have significantly more hitpoints.

same with beastlord, and beastlord not only has a better pet, they have SLOW. slow lets them fight anywhere. and they can get in, beat the tar out of it, pull back adn heal, and go in again. at lower levels, my beastlord was fighting 2 and 3 blue mobs at a time, something i could never do with the necro. they are much better soloers at low and high levels. and a slowed summoning mob isnt scarey. try aggro kiting one.

necros are not the best soloers. nor are they a good choice for a double/triple box. they do good damage, but draw alot of aggro and their pets cant tank anything at all if it isnt slowed.

you can make anything work. especially at lower levels and a 75 cleric. but choosing a necro is going to seriously limit where and how you do the grind.

for instance, i took a level 65 cleric and a level 35 sk with bazar gear into sol-a. came out a week later just playing a few hours a night at level 50. i was fighting 3-4 and sometimes 5 mobs all at once. the xp just rocked.

there is no friggin way in hell i could have done that with a necro. it would have died faster than i could heal it. even at lower levels, you are limited to fighting one mob at a time. with slow and a tank, you can fight many at a time at lower levels.

another good example. a 65 druid and any tank. at lower levels, thorn his butt and pull a train. OMG, you cant touch that kind of xp kiting. not even as a wizard quad kiting.

again, you can make anything work. but trying to powerlevel a caster is a lesson in pain. you have to fight mobs one at a time. and you have to kite them. you might as well be soloing and just have a tag along toon to do a little addition damage. but no way in hell are you going to get the type of xp you can with a tank and a slower.

it is not a good combo. not saying you cant make it work, but take your cleric and any tank class with bazaar gear into a dungon and pull a train with no downtime and you will see, casters are not for powerleveling. they are for grinding out mobs ONE at a TIME. and necros in particular are very limited in where and how they can hunt. atleast a wizard can quad kite below 50. stick c3 or c4 on him, and your little necro will be schooled. mages kill much faster too. i know, i used to hunt with my bro, he had a 65 mage and i had a 65 necro. my pet never got hit. ever. his air pet would shred mobs in a hurry. add a chanter or shamy with a speed buff, and OMG, it was a shredding machine AND it could tank. not to mention they get a significantly better heal for their pet than necros do. instant heals, not the pathetic heal over time crap that drains your hitpoints.

necro is not the best soloer by a long shot. and other than a wizard, i couldnt think of a worse class to double box. but try it for yourself. take your cleric and buff up any tank class and go to a dungon where mobs are blue to him and start pulling trains. you wont understand what im talking about untill you do. in the time you pull, kite/kill, and med that little necro, your tank/cleric combo would be non stop shredding mobs 3 to 5 at a time wothout stopping untill you get to higher levels.

i like my necro, it will always be my main. but it never got me invited to groups, was never invited to a AOE group, and was never powerleveld. you COULD buff the pet and put a DS on it, but it kills stuff so pathetically slow, it wouldnt be worth the effort.

Necro's can out DPS a full group. 7 guildees were pulling the bears in icefall, the necro outside the group pulling for us and kiting adds. Warrior, cleric, beastlord(me), 2 rangers and a druid. Half the time the necro was KS'sing us without even trying. It was a welcome relief when the druid had to log and we could get the necro in our group :) To hell with the ranger, just solo the necro or use it to level the ranger :)). Most ranger/necro duo'ers I know use the ranger's snare and the necro to kite and have the ranger autofire just like you wanted to. A better duo would be necro/wizard and then at least you have ports.

Do you still play anymore? I so disagree with necro's not being good soloers, and while my opinion may not mean anything to you ( I am sure it doesnt)but there are millions of posts saying just the opposite of you...that necro's are the BEST soloers
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yes, been playing my necro infact for the last couple weeks.

i never said they are not good soloers. please dont put word into my posts that are not there. they are good soloers. i said they are not the best soloer. and i stand by that.

it is a very popular class. and people will vigoriously defend their choices. if they really like class xxxx, then by god, class xxxx is the bomb. hell, a necro has always been my main. and they can solo better than a ranger, warrior, sl, pali, monk, rogue hands down. i agree with that.

but....they do not solo as well as a beastlord, wizard till 50, mage, druid, shaman. c3 and c4 are the great soloer equalizer. a chanter is a pretty good soloer too, and has the ability to controll crowds, slow mobs and speed pets.

as far as double boxing, again, you can make anything work. even a warrior rogue set up without a healer. and as long as you have a suppy of healing potions, there will be very little downtime atlower levels.

i AM saying there are much much better set ups for double boxing or triple boxing. and if you look at the posts defending necros, all of them illude to aggro kiting. and THATS my point. necros are very very limited in how they can solo, especially at higher levels. you dont need a healer to aggro kite. you dont need a second toon for that matter. but if you are going to use the necro as your focus, you are going to be limited to aggro kiting unless you can find an undead camp somewhere.

and you know what you are going to do in that undead camp? slow mobs and pet tank. something shamen, chanters, and beastlords can do with ANY MOB, ANYWHERE, other than boss mobs, ANYTIME. box a mage and a healer. would be more effective. not because mobs die faster, but because you are not limited to one type of fighting.

let me tell you something about aggro or fear kiting. you need a place you can run around without aggroing adds. SOE went to great efforts to make sure there are not very many places to do that. it can be done, but there really isnt alot of places you can do it. and once you find that sweet spot, that sweet spot is where you will be sitting till the mobs dont give xp anymore. yawn.

with slow, you can fight ANYWHERE. and thats my point.

as far as powerleveling, you cant powerlevel a caster. well, mabe at low levels, buf them up, thorn them, then chain heal them. but eventually, thorns will not be that effetive, especially when mobs start having 3000 hitpoints abd higher. then its massive downb time because you have to use your mana to kill. and there is no class that has a complete heal for mana. hit points are easily replaced however. massive down time. not to mention, you get to mid 30s, and have more than one mob hitting your little less than 1k hit point caster with no ac, your ch will be a waste of mana and probably take longer to cast than it will take those adds to kill your caster.

you want to powerlevel, you need ac and hitpoints out front. slow and heal in the back. then you can take 2,3,4,5 mobs at a time till you leave antonica atleast, then 2 to 3 at a time WITH NO DOWNTIME. its an xp generating machine.

the only way to get that type of xp with a caster is an AE group. and SOE again went to great efforts to make sure that doesnt happen by limiting the number of mobs you can aggro to 5. again, it can be done, but.....NOT BY A NECRO. their AE undead spell is a joke, and they dont have an AE to everything like druid, chanter, mage, wizard have.

they can not be powerleveled. they are not the best soloers.

again, you can mke it work, but you would be much much better off with a tank/heal/slow combo. and again, you will not understand untill you try it. roll a tank class, and drag him to the orc camp in the commons. 4 to 5 at a time with no downtime. your only limitation is finding enough mobs to feed to your machine. and with slow, again, you can fight ANYWHERE. not just that hand full of sweet spots you can find favorable pathing to kite.

yes they can solo well. no they are not the best soloers. yes you can make a due boxing a necro. no they will not be very effective and infact, very limited in where and how they fight. certianly not the best options for multi boxing.

Thanks for the advice guys =)

I'm definately reconsidering using the necro in a duo situation since they can solo well.

One thing, Shadow, concerning casters. i'm not worried about the PL abilities. Although it's true that a melee can be Pl'd much easier, I know that it'll be easy enough to PL as high as I want. So take that part out of consideration. As far as duoing is concerned, I'm only wanting to know about which pair will be able to get the best exp and kill hard named mobs the best.

Now, concerning the make-up. it seems that for duoing, everyone has suggested Slow and tougher pets or a tank are necessary.

Comparing as far as that situation is concerned, what would be a very good set up? I have a Monk, as stated before, would it be best just to PL a shaman up to 60 or so then just duo with my monk? What sorts of mobs would they be able to kill once they're on even footing? I'm assuming that set up would be better than a cleric/monk.

What about the beastlord set up? Who would duo best with a beastlord. Or a mage? Would a Bst/Mag duo be good? Shm/Mag?

I saw Enchanters mentioned. But I hear horror story upon horror story from enchanters about dying a lot. And that they're one of the most complex to play.

with Slow being necessary, it would seem that (excluding Enchanters) I'd have to include at least a Shaman or Beastlord into any set-up I'd be considering. If I use a beastlord, I'd guess DPS would be the counterpart, b/c otherwise, some abilities of the Bst would be lost with a shaman due to redundancy. And with a shaman, it seems that you can have pretty much anyone else as long as there's something there that does dps and can tank.

So I guess considering the options, which would be better? Beastlord or Shaman, and with either choice, what would be the best kind of class to pair it with? A pet class of some sort, a dps, etc.?

Thanks again in advance for the advice =)

Edited, Jul 26th 2007 12:13pm by Reculpine

again, the only way you will even get to, much less kill hard or named mobs is,

1. when you are a high enough level they are light blue or green to you, or...
2. you have some way to slow them.

and most named mobs summon. cant kite a summoning mob past 50. i have fear kited a few though. kind of excieting wondering if fear is gona break and if you will survive to cast it again. but mobs past level 50 can not be feared.

there are no dungons outside of antonica that have 100 percent undead in them. so a necro getting down to a named in a dungon is an adventure in itself. alot of root cooking. and after level 60, some mobs can be snared with darkness still, but very few can be rooted.

if you want to work to a named or want to be able to fight a mob that is still dark blue, you will either have to kite it as a necro, or slow and tank it.

a good example. i dont have any raid gear, so my 65 necro self buffed has about 3000 hitpoints and a 500 hp damage shield, with around 4000 to 4500 mana. in the stepps, a blue elemental i was aggro kiting quads for 400 to 500. thats anywhere from 1000 if he misses to 2000 damage in one round of melee. that gives you 3 seconds after the first round of melee till you see "loading, please wait" on your way back to your bind spot.

with horror, pyro, splurt and darkness and my pet of coarse, it was taking about 5 rounds of darkness to finnish a mob. thats about 5 minutes of kiting. when darkness broke early, i died. if i got an add, i died unless i could get fd off without an interuption AND is was sucessfull.

if i was sucessfull, i would end up with less than 1/5 mana using arch lich, and had to spend another 3 minutes or so medding back to full. thats about 8 to 10 minutes per monster not counting manuvering them for the pull to avoid the adds. thats about 5 monsters an hour, not counting a death. almoist a full blue bubble an hour. painfully slow.

if i died, it would take, even after a rez in the guild lobby, and the run back, a good 3 or 4 mobs to get back the lost xp. basically, if i died, the hour was wasted. and i died. usually about every 6th or 7th pull darkness would break and the first round of melee would have me spinning stunned, the second would finnish me.

you would do better soling light blue to green mobs. the xp is much slower, but atleast you didnt spend your hour or two of playtime going backwards. some nights you win, some you loose.

a shamen doesnt need to worry about snare breaking. and a slowed mob with his additional ac and hit points will let him stand up to alot more beating. slow the mob, dot it, beat the tar out of it. back off and let dog get aggro, heal yourself, go in again. summoning mobs, no problem. boss mobs, no problem. working your way down to a dungon, time consuming but no problem.

and thats solo.

add a tank with some real hp and ac, a cleric with CH, and adds wont be a problem either. let the shaman debuff, slow, then buff and speed the tank, and i guarentee you, not only will you have less deaths, you will be able to kill higher level monsters.

same with beastlord. their slow is only 50 percent till really high levels, but their pet is significantly more powerfull then a necro pet and has a ton of hitpoints. not to mention they have good healing ability both for themselves and theri pets.

do a cleric, beastlord and a tank and you would have a serious shredding machine that can fight anywhere.

bottom line, if you want higher level mobs and dungons, you need slow and a tank. you can make other combos work, but the better your tank, and the weaker the mob is made will = more killing and less dying and killing tougher mobs.

you could work a necro in as DPS if you had a high level shaman to both heal and slow and a tank on a triple box. necros do good dps. but they cant take a beating unless you have some really nice gear. and good DPS means mobs beating on you. thats why they kite. but you would need to triple box, and your third spot would have to be a healer/slower as opposed to one or the other. and you would need a tank that can hold aggro.

the best double box combo would be a shaman/warrior-pali-sk.
the best triple box would be a shaman/warrior-sk-pali/DPS

you already have a nice cleric. working in the cleric is not a bad thing, but it does mean you will hae to sacrifice some DPS for the all important slow. slow is not an option at higher levels, it is as important as healing.

so, cleric/slower/tank

you could sacrifice some slowing ability for additional DPS with the beastlord. their pet is really just awsome. especially at lower levels. almost overpowered.

you could also ballance out the missing DPS with speed for the tank with a chanter or shaman who can also deliver some dps as well as tip the scales with buffing the tank and slowing the mob.

so,
1. cleric/beastlord/warrior-sk-pali
2. cleric/shaman-chanter/warrior-sk-pali

1 would give you more DPS, 2 would give you better high level mob ability. when you get to bosses quading for 1000k a pop, your gona want them slowed or no amount of healing is going to help you.

You can't go wrong with Monk/Shaman. Great combo!

Shadow;
Great post. The beast after 55 is tough, as you said, cause even with the slow ( underpowered compared to Shammie) mobs do work you.

But as you say, play it your way...otherwise you gonna leave the game.


Happy Hunting.

Edited, Jul 27th 2007 2:49pm by yenwangweh

I play a Beast/Cleric combo or a Beast/Cleric/Mage trio and I have had no problems killing most mobs I run into other than in the really high end zones. I eat up Katta missions and DoN missions with them.

The Beast is my main (13khp 2.3k ac unbuffed) and the cleric and mage are just quested geared up (TSS mostly and some TBS drops). I got the slows and snares with the beast. Heals from the cleric and nice HP buffs. With beast buffs and cleric buffs I get to about 17khp. The mage is nice dps and a good offtank if a roamer comes in.

To pull singles I use either Cleric paci or snare/CoTH pulls. I just finished a Origins of the Curse in 40min just using the CoTH pulling (some really nice trains before the CoTH landed :) ).

Soloing at high levels I agree the beast is not great, you can do it under the right conditions but not viable for good XP.



Edited, Jul 28th 2007 5:22pm by Gohmur

I have a great deal of fun with my ranger/necro team. As far as solo-ing goes, I can kite just about anything, and if there isn't room to kite, like a dungeon, I can root rot the hell outta stuff. I can kill quick as hell too. When I group with guildies, they like for me to kite around them while they pull and kill in the traditional methods. In that setup, we keep rather even as far as who kills first, and we rake in the xp.

As far as boxing goes, I just set my ranger up in a corner, and kite around in front of him. He fires his bow, dots, and nukes, while with the necro I pile on the dots. If I'm lazy, I just turn on the autofire, and kite with the nec. Between the 2 of them, I've gotten around 500 AA and a bunch of levels. Yeah, summoners can be a pain, and I generally stay away from them, but there is plenty of non-summoners out there that drop some really great gear, to the point where I've gotten a lot of people in my guild and even strangers some really nice upgrades. My only complaint about playing a necro is that there are raid leaders who still ask me to twitch, and I'm not even gonna get into that cause this is about class duos. Ranger buffs, especially the strength and attack buffs, do wonders for pet DPS, along with heals and regen. /shrug Mostly up to how you wanna play I guess. I know there are more powerful pair possibilities out there, but I wouldn't trade in the setup I'm currently running.

Edited, Jul 29th 2007 3:59pm by winchester

Oh yeah, that's just when I'm lazy. If I need to burn something, I start nuking and DoTing, as well as popping discs and AA abilities. If the area is big enough that I can run my necro a good distance from the mob, I'll even take control and melee with him. It's why I like the combo, I can be lazy or really kick some ***.